From the archives: The Sitcom Room

Ken Levine, an Emmy-winning comedy writer ("M*A*S*H," "Cheers," "The Simpsons") and friend of this blog, is hosting another installment of his weekend writing seminar, The Sitcom Room, on Nov. 15-16 in LA. (For more specifics or to register, click on the previous link.) I was lucky enough to be in LA for the inaugural Sitcom Room last summer, and wrote a column about it that ran a few weeks before this blog went live and my articles were permanently archived. After the jump, that story, which originally ran on August 26, 2007.

The thing about believing in dreams is that you have to learn to ignore all the people who keep telling you to wake up. Last month, 20 dreamers arrived at the L.A. airport Hilton to attend The Sitcom Room, a two-day "sitcom writing fantasy camp" set up by Ken Levine, an Emmy-winning 30-year TV veteran who's worked on some of the best comedies ever ("M*A*S*H," "Cheers," "The Simpsons").

Richard Porter, 39, came from Phoenix, where he long ago lost any affection for his software engineering career. Isabel Gaddis, 46, came from Seattle, having recently decided it was time to do something she enjoyed, and why not sitcoms? Lizbeth Finn-Arnold, 39, came from Morganville, where she's been writing scripts while raising two kids. Jesse Allis, all of 16, didn't have to travel far; he was a child actor looking to become an adult writer.

After some preliminary remarks and Q&A, Levine divided his 20 students into teams of five. He gave them a mediocre scene he had penned for a fictional sitcom and told them to rewrite it -- while factoring in "notes" from non-existent network and studio executives and other assorted mishaps straight out of Levine's own career. The teams worked furiously, and the next morning got to see their versions of the scene performed by a trio of actors. They critiqued each other and by all accounts, everyone learned a lot and had a great time.

Then came Sam Simon.

Simon, who helped develop "The Simpsons," was part of a panel discussion at the close of the seminar. The panel was in the midst of a lively exchange when Simon dropped this bomb on the room:

"The sitcom is dead."

He wasn't joking.

"I think we all went 'Ugh!' " recalls Finn-Arnold.

"It was almost like being kicked in the stomach," says Porter. "Here's Sam Simon, a true god, he's been in this industry forever, and he says, 'It's done. It's finished.'"

Gaddis, a former Verona resident, was taken aback for a moment, "But my second thought was, 'That's a pretty funny scene.' Here's the expert sitting in front of the room of people wearing little badges saying 'The Sitcom Room,' and he's going, 'The sitcom is dead, dead, dead.' "

"I kind of found it slightly amusing, actually," agrees Levine. "There was a part of me that thought, 'Oh, no, they're all going to ask for their money back. Now I have to make sure that sitcoms still survive.'"

While Simon may have been blunter than he needed to be, there's no question the genre is currently, as they say in Hollywood, "challenged," and not necessarily the most secure career path to be following. There will be only 17 half-hour comedies on the big four networks combined this fall, one of the smallest numbers in recent memory.

In the mid-'90s, sitcoms were so abundant that recent college grads were getting six-figure development deals on the off-chance that they might be funny. Today, many sitcom veterans have shifted over to lighter dramas like "Desperate Housewives." Some television executives insist that younger viewers don't want to watch sitcoms, preferring to get their laughs from reality TV, or at least from more sophisticated "single-camera" comedies (i.e., shot on film with no laugh track, like "30 Rock").

"Clearly, that's (bull)," says Allis, one of those aforementioned younger viewers. "I think the formula does not matter whatsoever. It's that the sitcoms being produced right now are no good. I have friends my age who will come over to my house and we will watch 'Seinfeld' and a show like that, and who cares about how it's shot, or how many cameras, or if there are people laughing in the background. If it's a well-written show and it's funny, that's all that matters."

Allis also points to kids' and 'tweens' love of very traditional Disney Channel sitcoms like "The Suite Life of Zach and Cody" as evidence the genre's not dead, just napping.

"It's a little cyclical," says Levine. "I don't think it's ever going to come back the way it was (in the '90s), but you're already getting the feeling that the networks this season are buying pitches for multi-camera shows. There's already a little bit of a sea change there.

"And as opposed to the good old days of the past," he adds, "there are so many more outlets now. There's TBS and TNT and FX. I said to (the seminar students), 'The reality is that in 10 years, you may be writing for a venue that hasn't been invented yet. But in some form, they're always going to need comedy.'"

And The Sitcom Room made Levine's students realize comedy writing is a lot harder than it looks.

Porter was on a team with Finn-Arnold and Allis, and as they stayed up into the wee hours working on Levine's scene -- about a husband and wife taking ballroom dance lessons -- they kept tossing out jokes to amuse themselves and stay awake.

One of Porter's, about how the dance instructor once appeared in "A-Team: The Musical" got a big reaction and made it into the scene. But when they saw it performed the next morning, Allis said, "The 'A-Team' joke made us laugh in the room, but hearing it up there, it does sound like a sitcom joke. It sounds like writers up late trying to make each other laugh."

"It's a great line, but you could do that anywhere," Porter admits. "It wasn't organic to the scene."

"I still like the 'A-Team' joke," says Finn-Arnold. "We all pass judgment on 'According to Jim' and other such lowly sitcoms where we say, 'How the heck are they on the air?' But I have to imagine in all those writers rooms are people who are very talented, who are trying to come up with the best jokes."

"At the end of the night, 3 in the morning," recalls Gaddis, "I go to my hotel room to change and go to bed, I put the TV on and there was an episode of 'Coach' on, which I always mock. And I'm going, 'Well, that's not so bad! That's an actual joke with a beginning, a middle and an end!'"

That lesson in what's, as Levine puts it, "room-funny versus script-funny," was just one of many the students say they picked up, and despite the obvious challenges ahead, they want to keep pursuing this improbable career. Allis has another two years of high school and maybe college before he can get an entry-level job as a writer's assistant. All the jobs are in Los Angeles, but Porter, Gaddis and Finn-Arnold have working spouses who can't automatically relocate to a new city.

Gaddis is thinking about getting a place in Los Angeles for weekdays and commuting home on weekends, joking, "I should at least get good material to write about, get some good material about the airlines. Nobody's done that yet."

Levine is still developing shows with partner David Isaacs. He also plans to continue The Sitcom Room, both for aspiring writers and for corporate types looking for a more entertaining team-building exercise. And he doesn't agree with Sam Simon about the future of his profession.

"I found Sam's comment less deflating because I didn't believe it was true. My reaction wasn't, 'Oh no, the dirty secret is out of the bag.' Five years from now there will be sitcoms on the air. There won't be 'So You Think You Can Pack Suitcases.'"

Alan Sepinwall may be reached at asepinwall@starledger.com, or by writing to 1 Star-Ledger Plaza, Newark, NJ 07102. Please include your full name and hometown.